Thursday, March 19, 2009

Charles McCarry: The Best Political Novelist America Has Ever Produced?

Literary critic D.G. Myers takes a long look at the work of Charles McCarry on his A Commonplace Blog: "Shelley’s Heart, is the seventh of Charles McCarry’s novels to be reissued by the Overlook Press. (It is due out next month.) Originally published in 1995, it is one of the best novels ever written about the American left. His next novel was Lucky Bastard (1998), the account of a charismatic and winning young American, a sociopath, liar, and rapist, who is groomed for the presidency by Soviet agents. And together these two novels place McCarry in the small group of Americans who have written with distinction about what Irving Howe called “politics as a milieu or mode of life" . . . Charles McCarry may be the best political novelist that the United States has ever produced."

1 comment:

D. G. Myers said...

An admiring reconsideration of Shelley’s Heart will appear in next month’s Commentary.